Plant manager Stephen Smith uses a heat shield to inspect the constant melting process inside a furnace at the Cardinal Float Glass factory in Winlock. The plant, which employs more than 200 workers, has been up and running in south Lewis County for the past five years.
Rachel Powell monitors a bank of computer screens that track progress on the factory floor at the Cardinal Float Glass factory in Winlock.
Sheets of newly produced glass are stored in long rows at the Cardinal Float Glass factory in Winlock.
A thermometer near along the furnace line at the Cardinal Float Glass factory in Winlock shows air temperature exceeding 110 degrees.
Sheets of newly produced glass are stored in long rows at the Cardinal Glass factory in Winlock.
The furnace at the beginning of the production line at the Cardinal Glass factory in Winlock reaches temperatures of more than 3,000 degrees.
EVALINE — Cardinal FG plant manager Steve Smith can’t believe the facility he supervises has been operating for five years already.
“Time flies,” Smith said while giving The Chronicle a tour of the company’s Evaline float glass plant in mid-October. “I remember waiting and anticipating for the plant to open up, and to look back and see we’ve been in operation five years is just amazing.”
The cavernous 600,000-square-foot plant was built at a cost of $140 million, opening its doors in August 2006 on a 290-acre tract of land bordered by Avery Road and Highway 603. Since then, a giant furnace on site has burned at 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit for five years, liquefying raw materials such as ash, limestone and silica and slowly churning out a continuous sheet of pure float glass.
Float glass, which is created by the liquid floating on molten tin, is created and supercooled from 2,800 degrees to just over 100 degrees in the span of a few thousand square feet, as a vast array of machinery works to create the desired thickness of each piece of glass for the customer.
More than 200 employees, which Smith said come from as far away as Morton and Longview, hold down jobs at the plant. Smith himself moved from a managerial position at a Cardinal plant in Durant, Okla., near the Texas border, to lead the plant since day one and has found Lewis County to be a great location for the past half-decade.
“I think we’ve been welcomed very well in the community and I know we really appreciate everything everyone did for us, from getting us here to standing behind us and supporting us all the way,” Smith said. “It’s been a great location and a great place to do business thus far.”
The Early Years
Initially, the Winlock community seemed to carry split opinions over the arrival of Cardinal, after the Eden Prairie, Minn.-based company purchased 290 acres of property in March 2004 for about $3 million total. The business community in Winlock voiced a large amount of support, with several “Let Cardinal Fly” signs displayed at businesses throughout the town of 1,000.
But several residents specifically in areas surrounding the tract of land on Avery Road and Highway 603 voiced nervous opposition to what they termed as industrialization of the area.
Mary Garrison, former director of the South Lewis County Chamber of Commerce who now runs an auctioneering business two miles east of the Cardinal FG plant with her husband Mike, remembers her role as being a person who, while welcoming Cardinal to the Evaline community, worked to listen to neighbors of the plant who were concerned such a large development would negatively impact their quality of life.
“We wanted to establish a community climate that was very positive for Cardinal,” Garrison said, “but we did listen to some people who were frightened simply because they didn’t know the outcome. You couldn’t blame them because this was something that hadn’t been done in a particularly quiet area.”
Garrison was part of a group, including then-Lewis County Economic Development Council Executive Director Bill Lotto, who flew to another Cardinal float glass plant in Menomonie, Wisc. and saw first-hand the type of production that would happen in their own backyard.
The group came home with a positive impression, Garrison said, and she saw Cardinal FG’s move to Evaline as not only a positive economic development for Lewis County, but a partnership with neighbors who initially opposed the idea.
“I think it was a model of when both parties, the plant and the community, are well-involved and work together, good things can happen,” Garrison said. “It’s still quiet there and I don’t think there’s been a lot of property surrounding the plant that has changed hands since it’s gone in. It’s worked out well.”
Business Community in Winlock Reacts
Today, the South Lewis County Chamber of Commerce is led by Evaline resident Dan Godat, who coincidentally is behind a campaign to create a port district that encompasses the Winlock School District.
Echoing sentiments of the run-up to Cardinal FG’s construction in Evaline, several Winlock residents are displaying signs on their property with some in favor of the port, others not so high on the idea of a new taxing district.
In 2006, the business community in Winlock had pinned its hopes on Cardinal bringing business to the area, with everything from plant workers on lunch to shopping local stores once they let out for the day. But five years and one major recession later, on a recent rainy Friday afternoon business was sparse in Winlock, with city hall closed for the day, the restaurants not seeing many customers and an occasional car finding its way down First Avenue.
Greg Morosoff of The Trading Post, a gaming and consignment store at which he also repairs computers to generate cashflow, said he’s still waiting for a positive economic change downtown in the midst of the economic downturn, even with the Cardinal plant being in full operation for the past half-decade.
“If anything, things are worse down here than when they first moved in, but then again you couldn’t predict the recession,” Morosoff said. “They got here and then the mine closed, the recession happened and a lot of small businesses around here went under.”
Regarding Cardinal itself, Morosoff said, the business has served its purpose to provide jobs to the community; the Toledo resident who has run The Trading Post for the past two years thinks more development needs to happen in order to get people looking to south Lewis County as a hot spot for business.
“We’d still have to bring in a few other businesses here, and I think it’s going to happen,” Morosoff said. “You put more people down here, more business to serve those people will spring up and it’ll get going again.”
Morosoff said he believes the construction of Cardinal FG served to not so much provide an immediate economic benefit in the Winlock business community, but in terms of future development, Winlock and south Lewis County in general are “on the map” for a list of large-scale businesses to build.
“I think it has a lot of people talking about developing in the entire area here,” Morosoff said.
Looking to the Future
Back at the Cardinal plant, workers sized the cuts of glass by computer and drove glass bundles of all sizes around a 375,000-square-foot storage area on a small armada of forklifts, signifying yet another busy day at the large facility.
The glass being scored and cut by laser-precision machinery on the day of The Chronicle’s visit wasn’t for residential use — instead, it was a massive order that would be shipped to another Cardinal plant in Tumwater and later sent overseas to be used for solar panels. It’s part of what Cardinal’s doing to diversify in the face of a weak housing market, Smith said.
“A large part of our business now is solar panels that are being used in East Asian markets,” Smith said. “Housing is down and the recession has hit the construction industry hard, and the solar panel market has proven so far to be an industry that is helping us along.”
Solar panels have been big business locally for Cardinal, as the company expanded its total Lewis County workforce to about 300 in 2009 by expanding its Port of Chehalis facility at 214 Downie Road from 100,000 square feet to 130,000. That facility, which focuses solely on creating parts for solar panels, was expected to build about 9.5 million components in 2009 as Cardinal hired 50 more workers to keep up with demand.
According to Smith, Cardinal’s customers include several companies that create windows and doors for residential and business use; the company didn’t specify exactly who their customers were or their exact sales and production figures for the year 2010. But Smith did say the company was doing well and has maintained a strong workforce, as the layoffs that have hit many other industries in the area have not touched Cardinal thus far.
“We’ve still got trains rolling through delivering product on a regular schedule, we’ve got people here around the clock and we’re still getting our product out there,” Smith said. “Lewis County is a great place to be, and I believe we’re here to stay.”
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Christopher Brewer: (360) 807-8235
